The present invention relates to a system and an apparatus to allow data and messages to be printed or written onto a paper support or the like. Also is an answer back or interaction. The data and messages serve for the delivery of bills or invoices, for interpersonal communications or for requesting and supplying information between an agency and an individual user or between users.
At the present time the agencies supplying products or services to the public request the payment of said products or services through a network formed by one's own bureaucratic organization, based on internal personnel, and through external organizations, such as mail delivery services and money collecting services like mail and/or bank services.
Among these agencies, those which are enabled to keep the measurement means of the products or services at their premises, in order to obtain data from which the bills, to be sent to the users, can be deduced, do not face particular difficulties apart from using a great deal of personnel for the preparation of said bills and from being compelled to make recourse to mail delivery services (such as mail services and delivery services) with all the possible drawbacks such as delays and/or miscarriages of mail as caused by these services.
The agencies which, owing to the nature of the services being supplied, such as the agencies distributing electricity, gas, tap water etc., are compelled to maintain the meter at the user's house, suffer from the further drawback of being compelled to use personnel attending to the meter reading, in order to periodically read the meters and obtain the data from which the bills to be sent to the users are drawn.
As for budget reasons said agencies have a limited number of employees attending to the meter reading, said readings are carried out at rather long time intervals, of about four to six months, whereas for financial reasons it is convenient and desirable to bill the sums for the services rendered every two months, mainly to avoid an excessive financial exposure and to keep the amounts of the single bills within reasonable limits.
However, in order to effect a billing every two months, against a reading of the effective consumption every four or six months, invoices are to be issued on alleged consumptions which, although well calculated, are based both on general statistical data for each category of user and on historical consumption data of each user, may give place to a number of rather troublesome problems, such as the alternation of bills of too many different amounts, the obligation of reimbursements to a user after a number of too high amount bills with respect to the effective consumptions, misunderstandings owing to the sudden stopping of the service supply etc.
Moreover the jurisprudence of several countries is oriented to consider as invalid the bills issued for presumptive consumptions, whereby a number of agencies may be exposed to objections about the legal basis of these bills.